by Joe Ducie
Astoria frowned. “Emily Grace? Who is Emily Grace?”
I frowned and put my glass on the bar. “Sorry. Got confused for a moment there. You remind me of someone I used to know.”
Her eyes shone. “Someone from the future?”
“My past,” I said. “So, yes. A woman named Emily Grace.”
“I like that name.”
“Thought you might.”
“But you say it with such a depth of sadness. What happened to her?”
I knocked back the rest of my drink in one swallow. “She died,” I said. “We all do, in the end, at least once.”
“Oh, now there’s a story to be told there, I would wager.”
“Are you a writer?” In my world, such a question was a subtle, polite way of asking if someone had the talent—if they were Willful. I already knew Astoria was more than she claimed to be here. Did she know that I knew? Emily had always been several steps ahead of me. But in this timeline, this point of history, she had yet to meet the true Declan Hale. I knew more about her than she about me.
Still, I felt plans in motion about my head that I couldn’t grasp—knowing Emily, plans I wouldn’t grasp until it was too late and my part had been played. I needed to know why the Everlasting were in Atlantis, though I could hazard a dark and terrible guess.
“I dabble in short stories,” Astoria replied. “Romantic pieces, mostly.”
I rolled my eyes—not unkindly.
“What do you write, Declan?”
I tapped my glass on the bar and like magic the bartender appeared to refill it with soda and lime. No matter the time, place, or culture tapping your glass against the bar was a universal sign for yes, I’ll have another. The Story Thread could fray to a single, solitary strand and the last men standing would still clink their glasses, drink their poison, and watch the world end alone.
“Me? I write stories about gods and demons. Knights and angels. One man against the whole world, who always gets the girl.”
Astoria laughed. “And are these stories based on you? Does the hero wear a waistcoat, an eye patch, and spend his time in bars talking to strange women?”
“You’ve read my story before, eh?”
She tilted her head and offered me an enigmatic grin. “No, no I don’t believe I have. But I’d like to… one day.”
When I’d first met Astoria—as Emily—she had pretended to be a non-Willful customer in my bookshop. Just someone who lived and worked around Perth and liked to read. Well, pretended wasn’t the right word—she had never lied. I had just never asked the right questions. She had been playing a game, at the time, to get me back in the game. I’d killed her husband, by her design, and she had killed me so the Infernal Clock could be infused into my soul.
Why?
Why any of that? Because of who I was in the Tome Wars? I was infamous, certainly, and good at my job as a solider and commander of the Cascade Fleet. But to a creature like Fair Astoria, an ageless god who had lived when Atlantis was young, was I really that important? Emily had thought so—was it because of my words now, here in this bar, or because of something I’d yet to do?
Was I laying the groundwork for our sordid future? One that saw her giving birth to our son on the dying world of Voraskel under a ruined sky. A child I would abandon to Annie Brie.
Hell, had my slip up a moment ago, when I’d used the name I’d known her best by—Emily Grace—was that where she found the name, too? Had I named her for the future? What came first: the drunk or the fool?
“May I ask you a question?” I asked.
“I would very much like that, yes,” she replied and pressed her red lips together in a smile that was far too knowing.
“If you knew something was going to happen, say,” and I smiled softly, “because you’ve seen the future. And then you had a chance to maybe change things, perhaps right some wrongs before they become wrongs. Wrong some rights, even.” Like the Degradation. Better a hundred more years of the Tome Wars than the Everlasting unleashed from their prisons. Alas, for the could-have-beens. “No, forget that. Let me try again. If you cared for someone, someone special and lovely, and you had the chance to spare them hurt, real hurt, but at a cost you can’t foresee, would you do that?”
Astoria shrugged a single porcelain shoulder and took a sip of her drink. Her lipstick left a pink mark on the rim of the glass. “Would you not?”
“I…” I shook my head and then held her gaze on mine. “Let me ask that question another way then. Tell me, what comes first, the drunk or the fool?”
The reason I spend so much time in the dimly lit bars is because under that light, that dull half-yellow light, no one really casts a shadow. The gentle hue, the faint, subdued colour of almost-light was a space not in the real world, and not of the Void. Far removed from that anti-existence. It was the other way, something of genuine magic, of goodness and - dare I say it - close to happiness. Perhaps the only piece of true magic left to the world hid in that ambience.
But I loved it for a different reason, a simpler reason.
In the dim light, we were all shadowless.
And in the end, all of us, even the Everlasting, were nothing but mere dust forged in the impossible furnaces of distant stars.
Distant memories, one day.
*~*~*~*
A few days later, Astoria sought me out in my private quarters. Her knock on the door was light, delicate, and when I saw her standing there in a white dress, a soft smile, eyes that knew the true turning of the world, I invited her in.
Whether it was enchantment or just plain foolishness, a desire to unload some of the weight I carried on my shoulders, or the guilt of her death, I told Astoria everything of the future to come. I told her I knew she was Everlasting, I told her that we knew each other a long time from now, that her name to me was Emily, and that’s how I liked to remember her. I told her she had given birth to a son—our son—and sacrificed her grace to do so.
At that, Emily/Astoria grasped my arm. “Truly?” she asked, her eyes blazing. “I can conceive a son?” Tears brimmed on her lashes. “You are not entirely a herald of doom, after all.”
“I love you, Emily. By the Everlasting, I love you.” I felt like a thrice-damned fool for saying that last bit, but I wanted her to know.
And as always, Astoria showed nothing but her surreal calm. She knew that I knew that she was one of the Nine. In this time, they had yet to be known by their true name—the Everlasting. I had named her, and names were powerful things.
“Oh my, Declan Hale,” she said. “You are no longer interesting.”
“No?”
“No.” She kissed me gently on the lips. “You just became fascinating.”
No fate. No destiny. Wake early, work with your hands, and in the evening light a candle to keep the darkness of an indifferent universe at bay.
THE SECOND RESOLVE
Scotch, Lies, and Distasteful Pornography
“That’s the problem with drinking, I thought,
as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens
you drink in an attempt to forget; if something
good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and
if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
~Charles Bukowski
CHAPTER FIVE
ATTACK ON THE ATLAS LEXICON
(You used to be Declan Hale. The Declan Hale. Who are you now?)
The same convoy that had driven us to the field command centre formed part of the assault party for the attack on the Atlas Lexicon.
“I’ll try and finish the story later,” I told Annie as we loaded up in the back of a roofless dark-grey military jeep. My weapons had been returned, and I strapped on my sword, the barrel of my shotgun resting in the comfortable nook below my shoulder. “Some exciting, world-ending nonsense coming up.”
“It seems no matter where you go—other worlds, other times—your life is tangled with Emily’s. With… Fair Astoria’s.”
�
�Yeah, don’t think that doesn’t worry me.” The jeep sat on idle in the motor pool, our driver getting his marching orders from Lord Winter and his generals. A cool breeze rolled down the mountains, and the first can of purple paint—twilight—fell spilt across the sky, turning azure to mauve. “There’s a long game being played here, and not all of it is by my design. Time travel really… it really complicates matters.”
“Oh, you have a design?” Annie quipped. “Here it looks to me like you make things up as you go along.”
I grinned and nudged her knee with my own. “I put a lot of effort and planning into making it look like I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Then I am very impressed.”
“Thank you.”
An old hard case, gristly grey stubble, shaved head, sleeveless Kevlar vest, hopped into the driver’s seat of the jeep and winked at us over his shoulder. “Thought you’d be taller, Hale,” he said. “Sergeant Arlon Grenn.”
“What’s the word, Arlon?” I asked.
“Direct assault for us poor bastards in the jeeps. Winter and the handful of Dawn Mercenaries here will flank left around the biggest nest of deadlings and hostiles, draw them off us if they can. I’ve been tasked with getting you to the shield surrounding the city, above all else.”
I grunted. “So we’re basically not part of the main attack.”
“Near as I can figure it you two are Plan B,” Arlon said. “And are to be kept out of the way. Think you can get through that shield, Hale?”
My heart beat a little faster in my chest. “Yes indeedy.”
Arlon squinted at me and nodded once. “Well, you believe it if nothing else. Ma’am,” he said to Annie. “I hear you’re a sniper with that cannon on your hip. I’d request you target anything on the left side of the jeep as we ride in through the deadling lines.”
Annie drew her revolver and placed it on her lap. Her pockets held bands of sixes—ammunition pre-stacked for quick reloads—as did the small table between us. Hundreds of rounds, if hundreds were going to be needed.
“The heart or the brain,” Annie said.
“Aye, right you are.” Arlon knocked the jeep into gear as the rest of the convoy began to filter out onto the charming, antiquated cobblestone roads that snaked across the valley.
Nothing about the location, the postcard-pretty mountains, forests and rivers, the enveloping twilight, made it feel like we were about to go into battle.
I felt the cold excitement of the fight to come anyway. Tal had been right about that, too. I not only wanted the fight, I liked it.
At a rough count, as Arlon peeled out onto the road—a quarter of the way along the length of the convoy—about twenty vehicles were taking part in the assault. Primarily jeeps and troop carriers like we rode in, but also Winter and his no-doubt Willfull allies in the sleek SUVs.
Lord Winter rolled up alongside us, young and handsome, and flashed us such a charming grin that even I wanted to blush. “Luck, Declan!” he cried. His staff shone with pale blue light, the top two feet poking out of the window. “Luck, Detective Brie!” His car peeled away, splitting the convoy in half along a separate road to the west—the left flank—of where our fight would take place.
“Good god, that man is pretty,” Annie said. Her hands shook, her cheeks were flushed. She was nervous, but not in a bad way. I knew she could hold her own on this—or, indeed—any battlefield. I’d served with Knights who had less courage, who couldn’t play the hand they were dealt. Annie was good people.
I snorted. “Yeah, but do you really think he knows how to use that staff?”
Annie flashed me a grin. “Oh yes. I think he does.”
“Concentrate on shooting something dead, please.”
The jeep roared over cobblestones, the road widened, flat green fields on either side. To the east, herds of wild horses disappeared over the rising foothills, away from the noise and the Lexicon. Four other jeeps, one troop carrier, and two armoured units with mounted machine guns kept pace with Sergeant Arlon, smashing through wooden fences and spreading out along the fields.
We drove into a dell, arced around some outer buildings—cottages and such, a little village—and turned north on the road for a straight shot at the city trapped within the purple shield.
Alongside the road, and in our path, the landscape was strewn with slag, scorch marks from explosions, small trenches and the signs of struggle. A cheer went up from the complement of soldiers on duty, grimy—armed with swords and guns—as we thundered past the front checkpoint. They’d held the outer lines, and their work spoke for itself. Husks, bodies, the semblance of things no longer living littered the road, alongside piles of ash that had once been deadlings, burst into white flame upon being put out of their misery.
Up ahead, things not so dead lurked. We were about half a mile out from the city, from the edge of the shield. At this distance, the gleaming red-purple dome, the monstrosity of dark intent and corruption, didn’t look so transparent. It swirled with power, oozed with dark radiance. Perhaps it was my imagination, but as we drove closer, Arlon expertly navigating the debris through coiling clouds of smoke and the stink of expended copper, I saw a face form in the mile-high shield. A flash of sharp teeth, the wink of a narrowed eye. A promise of horror yet to come.
Everlasting, I thought, and flipped the shield my middle finger.
Annie gave me a curious look. I shook my head and pointed out to her left, raising my shotgun to the right as I did so. She nodded and readied her weapon.
Up ahead, seconds away, the fight would begin.
The armoured trucks sped past us as we got within a quarter mile and opened fire on the deadlings and monsters blocking the road. A hail of gunfire, rocket-propelled missiles, burst from the trucks, a wall of firepower, and shredded the creatures where they shambled. The deadlings didn’t even have time to fall before they burst into white flame, fireworks, lamplight, to guide our way.
The troop carrier, six men and women in the tray at the back, drew level alongside us, blocking my sight to the right. No matter, the soldiers aboard began blasting away, covering my flank. Annie started picking off corpses on the left.
We made it another few hundred feet before the road became impassable for the jeep. Great gouges had been forged through the stone, boulders the size of horses blocked the way. Arlon came to a screeching halt, as did the troop carrier and the other vehicles.
“Right,” he said, hopping out of the jeep. He focused for a moment, eyes distant, and then twin blades of hard light flowed down from his elbows, wrapped his wrists in cords of power, and formed twin swords of yellow energy three feet long. “Close-quarters work. We’ve got maybe two, three hundred metres to cover and reach the shield, Hale. You ready?”
I was already out of the jeep, shotgun pumped. Annie reloaded and joined me.
Off to the east, I heard the sound of explosions, men and women shouting, and felt the powers being thrown around at the left flank. Lord Winter and his team. The ground shook and, I realised, my head was pounding.
“Declan,” Annie said, rubbing her temple. “I feel funny.”
I nodded. “It’s the shield around the city. It’ll get worse the closer we get. You’re brushing against the Void here, Annie. Try and concentrate on something else, and if you need to be sick, do it quickly.”
Arlon and the squad of six soldiers from the troop carrier formed a phalanx in front of us. “Right,” he said again. “You lot know the deal. Shoot anything dead, and protect Hale and Annie. Our mission is to get them to the shield and then fall back. Any questions?”
Grim nods and the sound of rounds being chambered, swords being drawn, were the only answers to the questions not asked.
Something the size of a minivan—thick tentacles, a heft of heavy grey flesh—slammed into the cab of the troop carrier and sent the entire vehicle flying over our heads.
The soldiers guarding us unloaded on the beast. I ducked to the side and got off one blast from the shotgun,
severing a fat tentacle and casting a spray of yellow ichor and grey meat into the air.
Arlon swept in through the gap I’d created and drove his light sword through the nest of bulging black eyes in the creature’s face. It bucked tremendously, the energy of Arlon’s sword slipping through tough hide like butter, and reared back before falling to the ground—dead.
“Bloody hell,” Annie breathed. “What on earth was that?”
“Nothing that should be on Earth,” I said darkly. “Ladies and gentlemen, we need to hurry. We’re attracting to much attention.”
Arlon nodded and we set off for the shield. The ground was ash and broken stone, dirt and debris, but our going was quick. Deadlings stumbled out from behind boulders, other monsters, too, but we made short work of them. In slow numbers, we would make it. If not for Lord Winter’s assault to the east, we would have already been overrun.
On the outskirts of the city now, the enemy had made short work of defiling the parks, fouling the streams, and breaking the buildings outside of the shield. The zone between the fields and the city was a ruin, which was a shame, as only a few days ago it would have been lovely. The Atlas Lexicon was an academy, a great university, and the campus was meant to be picturesque, enlightened. This attack had violated that to the extreme.
An eel of guilt squirmed in the pit of my stomach. The Everlasting were loose because of me, and this shield was my… well, I would do what needed to be done to fight them. To destroy them all.
A bone-beast, like the thing Annie and I had destroyed near the forest, erupted from beneath the ground. An arm of razor sharp claws tore through the outer guard on our phalanx, cutting through a young woman and an older man, shearing them in half.
Annie was first off the mark to put the deadling down—and again, she moved with such speed, such precise aim, that I don’t think she knew just how impressive her shot looked. The deadling flew back, white flame engulfed its form. Annie reloaded with a wild grin.
The rest of our guard spread out to cover the losses, Arlon grim-faced and on point. The ruins of the cobblestone road became more of a lane. To the right, a pack of about thirty deadlings—fleshy, once-human things—cut a line straight for us.
